Sticking to things
This week is on Romans 12:11-13:
These verses describe some characteristics of the Christian life. They are things we should aspire to, and reflect a Christ-like character in people who live them naturally. They are difficult.
"Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." Zeal and fervor are qualities of being warm or fired up. If you lack zeal, you're not excited about God and your relationship with him. You're going through the motions. You're only thinking about Him on a Sunday or when you're reading this. Keeping your spiritual fervor is finding ways to keep the relationship warm and alive.
It's easy to keep a relationship with a flesh and blood person alive. It's more difficult when they live thousands of miles away in a different time zone. And it's very difficult when the person is a spiritual person like God. What are you doing to make a point of interacting regularly with God? Is your relationship with God something you value? Has your zeal fizzled out?
"Be joyful in hope." When you encounter a situation, are you naturally a negative person, or do you approach it hopefully? If you're hopeful, is your hope cautious, or joyful and bold? As Christians, we should be joyful in hope. Let it out! We serve a God who can do anything, whose every action is perfect.
Whether you're about to be evicted, or got fired, or found out that a loved one has cancer, God's response to that situation is going to be perfect. When things go wrong, God's grace causes them to right themselves and become better than they could be on their own, whether it happens right away or takes our lifetime to see. We are uniquely blessed to see the situation and be able to ask "What great thing is God going to do through this?"
"Be patient in affliction." But what about those times when hope's fulfillment is deferred for a long time? Maybe you've been waiting decades to find someone who will marry you. Maybe you've been sick for months and doctors can't find what it is. Maybe you just can't seem to get ahead in life, and are barely making it from paycheck to paycheck. What do you do in that situation?
When I hear the word affliction, I think of open sores, chronic pain, a cough that doesn't go away, stuff like that. It's not just a problem that sits in the background, on the sidelines. It's intrusive. It begs for a speedy conclusion. We're not naturally patient in a situation like those. But if we're patient in affliction, we wait for God to do what he is going to do. The thing no longer has power, but God does.
Most of the time we want to yell at God if things don't change for the better quickly. We doubt and complain and become depressed. We drive friends crazy with our whining and our prayer life becomes cold and repetitive. But imagine yourself enduring it patiently. You become a marathon runner, not just a sprinter. God's mysterious next move becomes the focus, not the moment you're stuck in.
"Be faithful in prayer." Who is good at this? I've gotten terrible at blocking out time to spend regularly with God, and including him in my struggles. I'll text a friend or complain to a neighbor before I'll sit down and commune with God. And when I do pray, I find myself wondering sometimes "Is this going to make a difference?" Recently a friend texted me with a struggle of his for me to pray for, and had I not been out for a walk I probably wouldn't have been there in that moment to be able to pray for it.
If we're going to be joyful in hope and patient in affliction, we've got to be faithful in prayer. We have to keep God in the loop, but we also have to believe that he is going to do something great. It may not be the thing we imagined, or happen the way we expected it to, but he's going to do great things when we ask for his help. But that also means going to God regularly to pray. How much are we exposed to the negativity and limitations of the world around us? We need to also experience God's reality, the one where we realize who He is and are comforted, and not just the disappointment and heartache of the world.
"Share with the Lord's people who are in need." Who wants to share? We want to keep our good things to ourselves usually. If you are saving up to buy a new phone and one of your friends needs rent money, are you going to miss out on that phone? If you're looking to take a nice walk by the harbor after work but someone from church needs someone to comfort them after a hard day, do you miss the beautiful sights and cool breeze? If you have a spare room and one of your fellow believers needs a place to stay for awhile, do you lose your man cave or yarn storage room? It's hard to not be selfish!
And yet when you share with the Lord's people who are in need, you are the very hands of Christ delivering his blessing and comfort. Christ poured out his life to meet our need. All of his possessions ended up in other people's hands. So sacrifice is a great way to be more Christlike. Sharing with others loosens our grip on our hoard of things God has blessed us with or which we have acquired in our own strength.
"Practice hospitality." Have you ever had to host or serve an ungrateful guest? It's infuriating! You're never finished. You're never enough. Your things are used up, broken, and misplaced. It's only a faint taste of what Christ had to endure through persecution, humiliation, and execution on the cross, but it's still enough to drive us crazy.
And there's more: When you serve someone, you have to be in tune with what they need. You are no longer the most important person in the picture. You have to give up your freedom in order to give them what they need. You may have to endure their sense of entitlement, the contempt for your mistakes, the drive for unattainable perfection. Can you do that without love and not snap eventually?
If you're looking to level-up your Christian life and grow spiritually, include these things in your life. Examine yourself and direct your actions. You may not be able to meet the challenge right away, but we get to ask for as much grace as we need to get us to where we need to be.
Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
These verses describe some characteristics of the Christian life. They are things we should aspire to, and reflect a Christ-like character in people who live them naturally. They are difficult.
"Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." Zeal and fervor are qualities of being warm or fired up. If you lack zeal, you're not excited about God and your relationship with him. You're going through the motions. You're only thinking about Him on a Sunday or when you're reading this. Keeping your spiritual fervor is finding ways to keep the relationship warm and alive.
It's easy to keep a relationship with a flesh and blood person alive. It's more difficult when they live thousands of miles away in a different time zone. And it's very difficult when the person is a spiritual person like God. What are you doing to make a point of interacting regularly with God? Is your relationship with God something you value? Has your zeal fizzled out?
"Be joyful in hope." When you encounter a situation, are you naturally a negative person, or do you approach it hopefully? If you're hopeful, is your hope cautious, or joyful and bold? As Christians, we should be joyful in hope. Let it out! We serve a God who can do anything, whose every action is perfect.
Whether you're about to be evicted, or got fired, or found out that a loved one has cancer, God's response to that situation is going to be perfect. When things go wrong, God's grace causes them to right themselves and become better than they could be on their own, whether it happens right away or takes our lifetime to see. We are uniquely blessed to see the situation and be able to ask "What great thing is God going to do through this?"
"Be patient in affliction." But what about those times when hope's fulfillment is deferred for a long time? Maybe you've been waiting decades to find someone who will marry you. Maybe you've been sick for months and doctors can't find what it is. Maybe you just can't seem to get ahead in life, and are barely making it from paycheck to paycheck. What do you do in that situation?
When I hear the word affliction, I think of open sores, chronic pain, a cough that doesn't go away, stuff like that. It's not just a problem that sits in the background, on the sidelines. It's intrusive. It begs for a speedy conclusion. We're not naturally patient in a situation like those. But if we're patient in affliction, we wait for God to do what he is going to do. The thing no longer has power, but God does.
Most of the time we want to yell at God if things don't change for the better quickly. We doubt and complain and become depressed. We drive friends crazy with our whining and our prayer life becomes cold and repetitive. But imagine yourself enduring it patiently. You become a marathon runner, not just a sprinter. God's mysterious next move becomes the focus, not the moment you're stuck in.
"Be faithful in prayer." Who is good at this? I've gotten terrible at blocking out time to spend regularly with God, and including him in my struggles. I'll text a friend or complain to a neighbor before I'll sit down and commune with God. And when I do pray, I find myself wondering sometimes "Is this going to make a difference?" Recently a friend texted me with a struggle of his for me to pray for, and had I not been out for a walk I probably wouldn't have been there in that moment to be able to pray for it.
If we're going to be joyful in hope and patient in affliction, we've got to be faithful in prayer. We have to keep God in the loop, but we also have to believe that he is going to do something great. It may not be the thing we imagined, or happen the way we expected it to, but he's going to do great things when we ask for his help. But that also means going to God regularly to pray. How much are we exposed to the negativity and limitations of the world around us? We need to also experience God's reality, the one where we realize who He is and are comforted, and not just the disappointment and heartache of the world.
"Share with the Lord's people who are in need." Who wants to share? We want to keep our good things to ourselves usually. If you are saving up to buy a new phone and one of your friends needs rent money, are you going to miss out on that phone? If you're looking to take a nice walk by the harbor after work but someone from church needs someone to comfort them after a hard day, do you miss the beautiful sights and cool breeze? If you have a spare room and one of your fellow believers needs a place to stay for awhile, do you lose your man cave or yarn storage room? It's hard to not be selfish!
And yet when you share with the Lord's people who are in need, you are the very hands of Christ delivering his blessing and comfort. Christ poured out his life to meet our need. All of his possessions ended up in other people's hands. So sacrifice is a great way to be more Christlike. Sharing with others loosens our grip on our hoard of things God has blessed us with or which we have acquired in our own strength.
"Practice hospitality." Have you ever had to host or serve an ungrateful guest? It's infuriating! You're never finished. You're never enough. Your things are used up, broken, and misplaced. It's only a faint taste of what Christ had to endure through persecution, humiliation, and execution on the cross, but it's still enough to drive us crazy.
And there's more: When you serve someone, you have to be in tune with what they need. You are no longer the most important person in the picture. You have to give up your freedom in order to give them what they need. You may have to endure their sense of entitlement, the contempt for your mistakes, the drive for unattainable perfection. Can you do that without love and not snap eventually?
If you're looking to level-up your Christian life and grow spiritually, include these things in your life. Examine yourself and direct your actions. You may not be able to meet the challenge right away, but we get to ask for as much grace as we need to get us to where we need to be.
Comments
Post a Comment